Free Falling Apart by Jane Lovering

proper identity cards we’d been promised but never got, out of the back door and into the minster yard, pausing only to wonder what they sold in a shop attached to, basically, a giant church. Then I saw her, half-crouched in the shade of one of the big trees that made the minster look, from this side, like a misplaced country residence. She was wearing a floral tea-dress and heels.
    â€˜You’re out of area, Kitty. You need to head back, or I’ll have to …’
    She spun round and I recognised her vaguely, a recent incomer to York with a permit that kept her south of the river. Her taste in clothing had obviously been formed during the rationing when the Troubles reached their height in the forties, because she’d slathered her lips in the bright red lipstick that had been so popular back then. It made her mouth look tiny, but not in a good way, more in a ‘one fang at a time’ way.
    However, I hardly had time to register this before she’d shot across the grass towards me, turning and moving with such speed that I was barely braced before she grabbed me.
    Most vampires will try to get their victim on the ground before they bite. Humans are at a huge disadvantage when they’re down and the vampires risk less damage to themselves from a prone human, so vamp attacks tend to follow a predictable pattern – and this one was no different. She locked an arm around my waist and tried to use her strength and forward motion to carry me down to the ground, but I was good at what I did, and I’d been attacked by quite a lot of vampires in my time. I put one foot forward, weight on the back foot, and then as she tried to sweep me down I folded in half. Then I straightened suddenly as she hesitated on the follow-through, used my bracing leg to kick underneath her and brought her crashing down to the cobbled surface, where she lay on her back and glared at me as I pinned her down with my body weight.
    â€˜What the hell was
that
all about?’ I drew the tranq gun and held it above her.
    â€˜There’s talk that there might be a fight coming. I mean, we’re superhuman and yet we let you run around as though you were equals, it’s not right,’ she muttered. ‘York should be run by people like us … people who can take control … You’re Jessica, aren’t you? Sil’s girlfriend? Good grief, what was he doing with a human, when there are much more attractive people of his own type. I mean, look at you!’
    â€˜What, you mean, look at me, sitting on top of you and holding a gun to your head?’
    â€˜You’re so …
scrubby.
Those shoes, really?’ The highly painted lips curled in disgust, making her mouth look like advanced punctuation. ‘He should have been with someone with style, someone with panache.’ She wriggled to pull her dress down over her knickers. They were La Perla, the cow.
    â€˜Great. Sil’s fan club is in town’—I fired the tranq into her neck—‘and heading for home.’ At least I hadn’t ruined any clothing this time, I thought, dialling Enforcement. ‘I’ve got a downed vamp here on the Minster Green.’
    â€˜Jess?’
    It was Harry again. ‘Are there actually any other Enforcement officers? Or is it all just you in different hats and rubber noses?’
    â€˜Minster Green? I can have a unit with you in ten.’ There was a rustling pause, as though Harry was moving himself, or the phone, or both; then he spoke again, more quietly. ‘What’s this one’s game then?’
    I looked down at the sleeping vampire at my feet. ‘Dunno. Think it might be the Vera Lynn Attack Force. Mad for Sil though, so obviously deranged.’
    â€˜Takes all sorts, doesn’t it? Okay, catch you later.’
    Lovely, kind Harry, attractive to the sort of girl who liked the idea of a big, strong man on whom to lean, and also, inexplicably, to